2018 / 20:10 – 20:30 [gmt] live from LIMERICK

Two Evolutions

Radio station: RTÉ Lyric FM

Venue/s of the event: +

audio stream: +video stream: +

Jürgen Simpson/Slavek Kwi – Two Evolutions

Two Evolutions takes its title from Stanislav Lem’s book Summa Technologiae in which the Polish science fiction author focuses on both biological and technological forms of evolution. The work was specially commissioned by RTÉ Lyric FM for Euroradio’s Art’s Birthday Party and was created via a series of performances in which acoustic sound materials and electronic synthesis systems came into close contact. The instruments included strobe lights, bubble machines, tam-tam, modular synthesizers and wind-up radio.

Jürgen Simpson is a composer, curator and researcher with work spanning multiple forms including electronic music works, music for film, dance, sound installations and opera. His work in the area of film includes six collaborations with director Clare Langan and their work has appeared at MOMA New York, the Liverpool Tate Gallery and Galerie Nichido Contemporary, Tokyo. He has a special interest in the field of screendance and is co-curator of “Light Moves Festival of Screendance”. He has scored six works for dance film director Mary Wycherley including the feature film “In the Bells Shadow” (2014), with the Irish Chamber Orchestra. His works for voice include the opera “Air India [redacted]”, a setting of poems by Renée Sarojini Saklikar to music and video, premiered in Vancouver in 2015. In 2003 he received the Genesis Opera Project’s principal award for “Thwaite” with librettist Simon Doyle. He is director of DMARC (Digital Media and Arts Research Centre) at the University of Limerick. Collaborators include Michael Nyman, Ian Wilson, Kevin Volans, Slavek Kwi and Raymond Deane. He has written extensively on the field of dance and film with chapters published by Oxford University Press and Palgrave MacMillan.

Slavek Kwi is a sound-artist, composer and researcher interested in the phenomena of perception as the fundamental determinant of relations with reality. He has a longstanding fascination with sound-environments, developing what he terms ‘electroacoustic sound-paintings’ that oscillate between sound only works and interdisciplinary works exploring social, spatial and temporal processes. These complex audio-based situations are created mainly from site specific recordings, resulting in subjective reports for radio broadcast, ‘cinema for ears’ for multi-channel playback, sound installations integrated into the environment and performances. From the early nineties Slavek has operated under the name Artificial Memory Trace. He facilitates experimental sound workshops with autistic children and those with learning disabilities. The workshop technique emphasises extensive listening and the stimulation of creativity through observation and the support of natural tendencies. Slavek was born in former Czechoslovakia, lived 14 years in Belgium and has been based in Ireland since 2000.